Tentacle-Free Anime: "Butt Attack Punisher Girl" (1994) Review

Man, guys, anime is weird. Butt I’m sure I didn’t have to tell you all that. 90’s OVA’s though really take the cake for absurdity. Knowing this, and being the bad storytelling masochist that I am, I too once in a while like to watch an anime understanding full well that it is going to be downright awful. So what’s the difference between this and other bad anime I’ve seen? If I know it’s bad, can it at least entertain me? Today, I focus on an anime just like that.

Summary:Mari Amachi is a new student at the Perfect
Religion Academy. When her roommate Saori Minami is kidnapped by the Black
Buddha gang, Buddha himself appears before Mari. He offers her the opportunity
to become Gautaman in order to save her friend. Mari accepts the proposal and
becomes Gautaman, a sumo-belt-clad hero who fights to protect freedom of
religion.[AnimeNewsNetwork.com]

Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman has to be one of the most uniquely-titled anime I’ve seen in a good long while. It’s pretty bad, butt it did succeed in entertaining me with pop culture references and satirical bashing to magical girl and shonen anime of the 80s and 90s. And to be frank, it was just a lot of fun. At 2 episodes long, 45 minutes apiece, Gautaman isn’t a big investment to your time and can be experienced in an afternoon, or evening, or morning, or even late at night. Basically whenever you feel like watching it.

Promo image for Gautaman R

The premise, too, sounds really interesting at first. An Academy where all religions come together to study together, without prejudice and/or misguidance? That actually sounds pretty dang ideal. I wish Gautaman had explored this concept a lot more than just being a romp fest of sexual gags and strange monster fights, but there’s still a lot of charm in what we ended up getting. For example, there are a few creatures that Gautaman faces that are inexplicable riffs off pop culture icons. Dark Vader, a sumo wrestling behemoth tasked with exposing Gautaman for who she really is, which awesomely the music played during his scenes is a remixed version of the original Vader track from the Star Wars movies, and three Teenage Mutant Ninja Octopi that are less than a match for our imposing heroine.

Mari too is a girl who one can sympathize with. She doesn’t want to be Gautaman and often claims she’ll never be Gautaman again, only to be pulled back into the realm of super-heroing. And she’s a very nice character, who just wants to see everyone happy and wants to become a new Mother Theresa.

You might call her a Mary Sue, and that’s
pretty apt to be honest, butt it’s her honesty and innocence that juxtaposes
nicely with the sexuality being Gautaman brings with it. I also like that, as
Gautaman, she’s still Mari. Just slightly more confident and ready to get the
job done since no one knows who she is.There are a few more key players, Mari’s
roommate Saori and Mari’s eventual love interest Tobishima. Saori is a bit
tougher than Mari is and really helps to bring up Mari’s confidence and get rid
of her boy phobia. Saori also has a character arc of her own and it’s probably
the saddest of the bunch depending on how easy it is for you to sympathize with
loving someone who will never love you back (see: it’s devastating). And
Tobishima is a typical shounen-ai character who is meant to look pretty butt
sometimes has a perverted streak of his own. He’s fun to watch, but there’s not
much more there in the way of characterization.

Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman. (Click to enlarge)

The villains are generally shallow and, aside from
Dark Vader, don’t generally please when it comes to putting up a fight against
our heroine. Although there is at one point a “beauty” pageant put on by the
Black Buddha where girls are forced to see if their butts fit a butt print left
by Gautaman, to weed out her identity. That was pretty fun to watch.

Dark Vader

The second episode, Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman R is the more risqué of the two; featuring borderline tentacle-hentai and pro-lesbian scenes between some of our main cast. If you’re into that sort of stuff, there you go. The thing to remember when it comes to Gautaman is to never take it seriously, or you’ll find yourself way too infuriated for your own good. Just enjoy it for what it is, and realize that there are still hundreds of anime out there that are still better.

Gautaman using her... ummm... unique skills.

I will say though, for its lack of any proper depth of a story, a lot does happen in each episode. At least 3 or 4 fights against different enemies to round out the time, so that you’re never actually bored; though the times I saw Buddha himself showing up to give exposition (though the show did poke fun at that detail) I did find myself groaning more than I should’ve.Butt Attack Punisher Girl is not a show for everyone. You watch it because of its title and because of what little you may’ve heard about it. Could a lot more story have been put into this than the shallow strip of a sumo belt unraveling that it was? Sure. You know I love complex, thought out, all-encompassing stories. Butt at the same time there are times when I just want to laugh; even if it’s stupid, even if it’s not meant to be taken seriously, especially if it’s not meant to be taken seriously.

Tobishima puts it all out there.

I want to be entertained just like everyone else does. Say what you will about the awful, the absurd, and the putrid way Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman represents everything generally conceived as bad by the general public who can’t see past their pre-conceived notion that all anime is too kid-friendly or simple animated porn, butt at least it did what I hoped it would. It entertained me. And I already knew I was never going to get anymore out of it than that.Final Score: 1 Guataman Punch out of 5

Have you seen "Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman"? How did you enjoy the movie and the review?